Customer Reviews

Weber: Der Freischütz ~ C. Kleiber

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is, quite simply, the best recording of this incredibly important opera that you can find. It does Weber credit that after 200 years the Wolf's Glen scene can still make a person shudder. Cast and orchestra are in spectacular form, and the interscene dialogue in nicely truncated to keep things moving forward.

My big gripe about this album is that DG's rerelease does away with all the liner notes that were a great addition to the initial release. Even the excellent (menacing!) cover art is placed askew. I realize that you can't beat th new price, but even Naxos provides a full libretto with their operas (for even cheaper). So, buy it, but narrow your eyes a little in protest at this new habit of stripped-down re-releases.

This is definitely one of the landmarks of modern opera recordings. "Der Freischutz" is not performed very often outside of German-speaking countries, but this opera transfers very well to CD and demands to be heard. This recording in particular captures the atmosphere of the piece perfectly - you feel like you're in a dark German forest. Kleiber's pacing of the "Wolf's Glen" scene is particularly convincing. The whole cast is excellent - I have never heard better singing from Peter Schreier and Theo Adam - but Gundula Janowitz really steals the show with her Act II aria and Act III "prayer" song. I have rarely, if ever, heard more ravishing singing on record. Of course, most of the credit for holding this performance together goes to Carlos Kleiber, whose international reputation largely came into being with this recording.

It is good to finally have this opera at mid-price, very well remastered (much better than the original CD). I have two very minor reservations. First, this reissue has been shorn of the lengthy essay that accompanied the first CD issue, although the relatively brief essay included in the booklet is helpful (there is also a translated libretto and detailed summary). Second, Kleiber uses actors, rather than the soloists, to speak the dialogue in this opera; this is generally not distracting, but I noticed that the actresses who speak the dialogue for the roles of Agathe and Annechen have more strongly contrasted voices than Gundula Janowitz and Edith Mathis, who sing those roles. These points are very minor.

Overall, this is one of the most melodic, exciting, and atmospheric of all operas -- it may be my favorite -- and it's a great introduction to the art of Carlos Kleiber, who has made only a select few recordings, and his excellent Germanic cast. At mid-price, it's more mandatory than ever.

I love this opera and this recording is truly first rate when it comes to the acting and the expressiveness of the singers. It is a litle too fast for me, though. The speedy tempo makes the Wolf's Glen scene truly spooky and the it tends to move the rest of the score along in some of the slower parts. The problem is that notes are lost in the process. Weber wrote into this opera some beautiful orchestral nuances that disappear as everyone seems to hop on the expressway and rushes to finish out the score. The EMI recording with Birgit Nilsson and Nicholai Gedda under Heger is much slower, filling out the richness of Weber's Bel Canto sound, but losing some of the punch that this recording has. I have yet to find a recording that is slow when it needs to be slow and fast when it needs to be fast. Everyone seems to take the entire opera at the initial tempo with little variability.

In the end, DG's recording comes up first because it makes your heart pound. Janowitz and Schreier are second to none in their expression and vocal acting and the Wolf's Glen is a rushing mass of terror. All in all, a good recording with everyone in top form.

Having read the great reviews and loving the opera, I bought this recording with great anticipation. My reaction after listening was mixed. The positives have been described by others. And there are many moments that are absolutely dazzling. What bothered me was the way Kleiber seems to conducting almost frantically. For instance, the Waltz (which you can listen to on the sample) is played at a breakneck speed. It didn't conjure in my mind townspeople dancing into the tavern. The pacing made me think Kleiber was being almost dismissive of the music. At the start of the wolf's glen scene, the ghosts don't seem spooky, they seem shrill. I would encourage people to be wary when recordings are "anointed" as this one seems to have been. I couldn't argue with someone calling this recording "brilliant," but its idiosyncracies would make me unwilling to describe it as "definitive."

Balancing brilliant value in performance and recording against infuriating lack of commentary in the liner, I still have to give this great set the full 5 stars.

The performance is 30 years old now, but the recording at its frequent best would draw high praise even today. The quality is not quite 100% consistent - now and again passages for full orchestra lack the spaciousness and depth that are so remarkable at many other points, and there is just a hint of distortion on Janowitz's high notes in her big scena in Act II, but these are quibbles. Far more representative of the general proficiency in the recording is the wonderful romantic aura round the even more wonderful horn playing near the start, the really terrific sense of eerie menace in the wolves' glen (with the full terror of Samiel reserved for the end) and the perfect fidelity given in general to the singing, both solo and chorus. Both Janowitz and Mathis sing like angels from on high, the huntsmen in chorus are the nimblest and most accomplished such a body that I ever heard, and the orchestral tone is gorgeous too. All this demanded full justice from the recording staff, and they have done it proud.

I personally go along with Kleiber's handling of the score in practically every way. When steadiness and calm are called for we get them - the slow start to the overture could hardly be better, nor could Agathe's great cavatina in Act III, sublimely done by Janowitz. However this reading has a spring in its step, and that as much as anything is what I love about it. It helps, obviously, to have virtuoso performers, and I have already drawn attention to the chorus in that respect. For all the Gothic shivers and goings-on, this opera is full of joie de vivre, or whatever the German is for that. Like Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Bizet, Weber was taken away from us too soon, another sacrifice to consumption. No composer's music could be less suggestive of approaching death that his. His orchestral scoring alone, deeply admired by no less a master of that art than Berlioz, is a celebration of life by itself. His melodic gift is one of the greatest there has ever been, stronger in my view than Mendelssohn's and up there with that of Berlioz and that of Verdi himself. This is what an adequate realisation of this work must bring out, not just the picturesque horrors. On this set you will hear some genuinely spontaneous-sounding laughter for one thing, and the true and vital gusto from the peasants, huntsmen and the rest of them. Obviously `characterisation' in a lightweight and fairy-tale parallel like this to the Faust theme is broad-brush, but where this score excels is in its varied and intensely dramatic delineation of situations. This is something else the conductor must present with the utmost clarity and vividness, and I can hardly imagine it done better than it is done here. And a special mention must be made of the magnificent realisation of the scene with the hermit (der fromme Klausner for initiates) -- credit even-handedly to Kleiber and to Franz Crass.

I love dear Schumann and I love his Manfred, especially in the realisation by Beecham, but I could only sigh to think of what Weber might have done with that theme. We should be grateful for what we've got, I suppose. The entire cast cover themselves with glory, but pride of place goes to the two sopranos. Peter Schreier is what I sometimes think of as a `mezzo-tenor', something like Mark Padmore. Theo Adam is a Wotan and a Sachs that I particularly like because of my own personal interpretation of those roles, but even those who think him lightweight in Wagner surely must have no such reservations about his Kaspar. The men are all fine, but it's the women here who make the really big impression - them and the orchestra. Not to mention the chorus and the conductor. Nor do I overlook the recording personnel.

I have had this recording for 25 years...I have both LP and CD. It fully deserves all the awards it got, and is one of the great recordings of the 20th century. The music is direct and forceful; check out the introduction to Kaspar's Drinking Song for some terrifically driving downbeats. During the casting of the magic bullets in the Wolf's Glen at midnight, you really feel as if the the natural world has been turned askew. All this is helped by Weber's decision to have the intervening dialogue spoken rather than subject us to dreary recitative. Even people who don't like opera will get a charge out of this one, which opens and closes to the sound of gunfire. The Huntsmen's Chorus has to be one of the most vigorous numbers in all of classical opera, and it is brilliantly rendered here.

It has been claimed that the peasants' dance is played too fast, but that brings out these people's frantic search for enjoyment. The peasants are not really happy, as you can tell from the way they heckle Max. Jealousy, rivalry, resentment...these are the prevailing feelings which pave the way for the strange events that follow. And it's wonderful the way the last notes of the dance fade into the soliloquy Länger traf ich nicht die Qualen.

This recording is done by the orchestra Weber once directed, Staatskappelle Dresden. The events in the story take place in the strange sandstone hills and dense forests just south of the city (so beautifully portrayed by Weber's contemporary Caspar David Friedrich), so the musicians are able to imbibe the atmosphere. This was all part of East Germany at the time of performance, so the ambience of cruelty and hypocrisy would easily be accessible to the performers. I knew a young lady who visited Dresden just after reunification and exclaimed "the city was full of ghosts".

Carlos Kleiber conducts with great passion. He grew up and studied music in Buenos Aires, where his father Erich was a conductor at the Teatro Colón (associated with such great names as Manuel de Falla), and Carlos seems to have picked up a certain amount of Latino panache. No musical collection is complete without this work.

This is a wonderfully conducted version of Der Freischutz with a really strong cast of singers. At the top of these is Gundula Janowitz, who turns what is usually a relatively bland character into what Weber wanted... a lovely maiden of haunting purity. There is a stillness to the sweet sound of her voice that seems to stop time itself. If everyone else had been just average, it would still be the recording to buy just to hear her Agathe... however everyone else is terrific! The wolf's glen scene is particularly vivid and spooky. A wonderful recording!

This is a wonderful work in a wonderful recording -- and at such a reasonable price! Weber was a delightful man, a prodigiously talented pianist who studied with the Abbe Vogler (whom Mozart, incidentally, despised) along with the young Giacomo Meyerbeer. He died quite young, in London, not far from where I live. Years later, Weber's remains were exhumed and reinterred in Dresden at a service presided over by Richard Wagner coming from Wagner, a most jealous partisan, this was praise indeed). While not the earliest of his operas, Der Freischütz is easily the best known, and it had a formative influence through its musical vocabulary and dramatic approach on the whole of nineteenth century music, from the French (through Berlioz, Gounod amd Massenet), the Italians (through Verdi and Boito), the Germans (through Meyerbeer, Marschner, Spohr and, of course, Wagner), to the Russians (through Glinka and Mussorgsky). Listeners will note Weber's characteristics: highly tuneful and affecting arias, a most unusual and inventive approach to orchestral sound -- unlike anyone else, really -- and an uncanny ability to infuse his music with dramatic tension. If you ever have the pleasure of seeing Der Freischütz on stage, this recording will serve as a wonderful preparation for the event and a memory long after.

Next stop on the introductory tour: all the piano sonatas, then the Konzertstücke, then the symphonies, before returning to the operas, Euryanthe and Oberon. All delightful and affecting music by a great master!

I can't add anything that will give you more insight that the wonderful reviews already written about this recording. I simply would like to state that I am grateful that Gundula Janowita and Edith Mathis were chosen to sing the roles of Agathe and Annchen.

The critics will say that Janowitz is not an ideal Agathe. Who, then, is an ideal Agathe? This is a role that is seemingly contradictory in itself, in terms of singing. It sometimes requires pure, limpid note-spinning; at other times, Wagnerian steel. The quandary is: Whom best to choose? Do you opt for a more lyrical voice, or a dramatic one? I vote for the lyrical one. Birgit Nilsson also sang this role on record. But, evidently, she was too rough for the role. Janowitz, of course, doesn't have Nilsson's steel, but she acquits herself in the more dramatic moments. There is no ugly spread on top, as you would expect out of lyrical soprano who is "pushing." To my ears, she remains in tune. For someone who is celebrated as an interpreter of Mozart, it is incredible that she could excel, at least on record, as Agathe.

Edith Mathis is also a joy to hear. She is ideally paired with Janowitz. Too bad, though, that the woman whom they chose for the speaking voice of Annchen sounds like a wenchy barmaid.

For most listeners, taking on faith that this legendary recording really is great, there's nothing to be disappointed by. Before Carlos Kleiber came to the score, Der Freischutz was a comfortable staple in German opera houses, to be absorbed along with strudel and beer as an accepted thing. Kleiber set the music on fire, and it's due to him that every moment is riveting. DG's 1973 sonics, to tell the truth, are a bit edgy and thin, but the new remastering is a step forward.

The detractors at Amazon have a point about the singing. If you aren't tuned in to Kleiber as the opera's driving force, picking at Peter Schreier (too thin and screechy for the role of Max), Gundula Janowitz (cool and a bit hooty as Agathe), and Theo Adam (curdled tone, dull portrayal) comes easily enough. But no rival Freischutz is perfeclty cast, and the fiendishly difficult role of Max never found its perfect exponent in Fritz Wunderlich, who died before he could record it.

Taking all the minuses into account, the singers are imperfect but very fine, and by subsuming themselves to Kleiber's vision, they give us a Freischutz unmatched on records.